hello. sometimes i feel like a senior citizen using a computer for the first time when it comes to WordPress…
i’m working on a site http://www.evangelicalassociation.org/EAWordpress and i’m hoping to create a forum that requires a log-in and can receive email notifications when a new topic is posted. i’ve downloaded the latest version of bbpress as well as bbpress email notifications today.

where do i start? how do i add the forum to my page? when someone clicks on the ‘forum’ menu option in the navigation, will it prompt to create a log-in?

i’m very new to wordpress and i know very little about coding and things like that, so please be gentle 🙂

thank you for your help!!!

[@robin-w Moderator 11 years, 3 months ago]

Start by watching this, it’s a bit old, but will get you started.

Then

Create a page called “forums” or whatever you set the forums page to be when you were in settings (see video), if you are using a custom menu, add this page to it. That way your have a fourms page on your site which has all the forum stuff inc. login which we’ll add next!

Next – install a further plugin called bbpress tweaks https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-wp-tweaks/

This :

Adds a forum specific sidebar to your forum page, so this can be different to the blog and static pages.

Gives you login widgets which along with recent comments and recent topics widget makes your forum sidebar have everything it needs

example

http://www.gospbc.co.uk/forums/

[@halydris Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

Hi Sorry similar issue. Is there a ‘this’ with the “start by watching this”?

[@robin-w Moderator 11 years, 3 months ago]

Yes there should be was fairly sure I’d posted it

link is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4vkOggVXfI

[@halydris Participant 11 years, 2 months ago]

Cheers for that, though the forum specific sidebars still don’t appear. I’ll dig a bit deeper!

[@wordprosystems Participant 11 years, 2 months ago]

thank you!! that video was incredibly helpful!! i got my forum up and going, still trying to figure out how things work. I also downloaded the bbpress tweeks plugin you suggested. i cannot seem to get it to work though. what steps do i need to do to have the members log-in section in the sidebar?

[@wordprosystems Participant 11 years, 2 months ago]

also, came upon another little snag, and this is probably because i clicked something along the way, but on the same page where my forum appears below the forum is the exact same forum again… how do i get rid of that bottom one?

[@wordprosystems Participant 11 years, 2 months ago]

welp, nevermind on that last post, i figured out what i did wrong. i still am wondering about the member log-in portion of the plugin. i’m really excited i think this is going to be perfect and exactly what my client wants!

[@john_ggg Participant 11 years, 2 months ago]

Robin, thank you so much! This video is really helpful! (It’s strange that I didn’t find it myself). Anyway, thanks again!

[@robin-w Moderator 11 years, 2 months ago]

you’re welcome

[@wordprosystems Participant 11 years, 2 months ago]

i finally figured out how to get the member log-in to show up on the sidebar. thank you again so so very much robin for your help!!!